NEW AND EVEN NEWER
FOSTERING INNOVATIVENESS IN PRIMARY EDUCATION

Swantje Weis¹*, Claudia Scharf ², Inga Gryl ^3
1 University of Duisburg-Essen, GERMANY, swantje.weis@uni-due.de
² MA, University of Duisburg-Essen, GERMANY, claudia.scharf@uni-due.de
³ Prof. Dr., University of Duisburg-Essen, GERMANY, inga.gryl@uni-due.de
*Corresponding author

Abstract

This paper describes the need for the implementation of an education for innovativeness. Innovativeness as ability to participate in innovation processes is a competence closely linked to participation processes in a dynamic, ever-changing society that needs mature citizens that shape the present and the future in accordance with their ideas, interests and social responsibility. This involves questioning current circumstances (reflexivity), developing new ideas (creativity) and bringing those ideas into action (implementivity), which are the three core dimensions of innovativeness. As innovation processes are complex and dynamic, and as a creative idea does not necessarily lead to an innovation, participating in the innovation process can occur in an active, idea-creating manner, and/or in a reactive, innovation-evaluating and implementing orientation as well. An education for innovativeness addresses all these dimensions. This paper outlines, that current educational-political documents in the case of Germany are nominally supportive towards an education for innovativeness by promoting the ability to participate. However, these calls do not meet the standards of innovativeness: Firstly, because the term of innovation is fuzzy and dominated by catch-word usage, and, secondly, because innovation and participation are mostly obligated to a neoliberalist ideal that does not support mature societal changes but a consolidation of a given framework. Widely deepening the rudimentary educational-political calls for participation, this paper, instead, argues for a humanistic perspective on the innovation process in accordance with the humanistic ideal of education, allowing real participation and future- and development-oriented structuring of society. The case of the German subject ‘Sachunterricht’ (Primary Social and Science Education) illustrates that innovativeness can be taught in school – even in the early years – particularly, when it comes to interdisciplinary thinking and linkages to everyday scenarios. Nevertheless, a schoolbook task analysis regarding the subject ‘Sachunterricht’ reveals that there is almost no fostering of innovativeness in this given material right now, leaving space and obligation to develop concepts and instruments that foster innovativeness in school.

Keywords: innovativeness, innovation, participation, elementary education, Primary Social and Science Education, schoolbook analysis, task analysis